AI system tries to rename classic cookies and fails miserably

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Grandma's Spritches. Hand Buttersacks. Nutty Loispers "then Wholes". These are some of the wacky monikers that an AI system has given to cookies and biscuits after being 'fed' 1,228 classic recipes, and asked to rename them.

AI researcher Janelle Shane trained the machine to come up with these new cookie names, having carried out similar experiments in the past with metal band names, guinea pig names, and paint colors.

She explained why the resulting names were so strange in a blog post, saying: "One neural network I use, called textgenrnn, tries its best to imitate any kind of text you give it."

"The problem is that it doesn't know what any of these words mean – it's just picking letter combinations that seem likely to it."

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So, the resulting names give us an insight into what human cookies 'sound' like to an AI network – and with creations like Canical Bear-Widded Nuts, Apricot Dream Moles, and Bars*, they don't exactly sound appealing.

Although the experiment was intended as a bit of fun, it does demonstrate the teething problems that AI technology must overcome in the future if it is to be further integrated into our everyday lives.

While it can predict sales, translate languages, power our smartphones, and control our smart homes admirably, it still has quite a way to go when it comes to 'sounding' convincingly human.